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The search warrants that were used to investigate the home of Adam Lanza were unsealed. Lanza was the 20-year-old gunman, who killed his own mother, two classrooms of children at an elementary school in Newtown Ct, six adult educators there, and then himself last December. Hitherto unknown details about the massacre qualified it as the Story of the Day and were the topic of Elaine Quijano's lead item on CBS, which has followed up on the killings more diligently than the other two newscasts since the New Year. Simultaneously, gun control activists took advantage of this spotlight to mobilize with nationwide rallies and a speech by President Barack Obama at the White House. NBC decided to lead with Stephanie Gosk on the gun control angle. ABC took a different tack, and gave its lead to David Wright and an unhygienic dentist in Tulsa.

CBS' Quijano filed from Connecticut, including harsh criticism by the school psychologist's widower against Nancy Lanza, who was shot in the face by her own son. The dead woman had "some culpability" in her son's crimes, charged Bill Sherlach, blaming the victim. Quijano's colleague John Miller, himself a former cop, recognized the "tactical reload" technique that Lanza employed as a police procedure. Lanza himself may have learned it through the chatrooms of the Call of Duty videogame, Miller speculated, not at the police academy.

NBC's reporting from Connecticut, by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, was folded into Stephanie Gosk's piece on gun control. ABC had Jim Avila file on Newtown from the White House. ABC did not run a story specifically on gun control legislation, although Avila did note that a federal ban on assault weapons "looks doomed." Since the Newtown massacre, ABC has paid least attention to the general topic of gun control, CBS most. For example…

Mark Strassmann on the federal ban against studying gun violence as a public health problem.

Chip Reid on the antiquated system for tracing firearms used in violent crimes.

Dean Reynolds on unenforceable mandatory jail sentences for illegal gun possession.

John Blackstone on the logistical obstacles blocking the confiscation of firearms from felons and the mentally ill.

Now Bob Orr tells us that already-existing legislation forbidding so-called straw-man gun purchases on behalf of those who would fail a background check is enforced only half-heartedly.

As for ABC's lead, the dirty dentist of Tulsa was a story of no national import, in-house physician Richard Besser reassured us (at the tail of the Wright videostream). Such safety violations -- rusty instruments, dirty autoclaves, expired medication, reused vials -- are almost never found by the Centers for Disease Control. This exception, traced through a single hepatitis infection, will lead to 7,000 of the dentist's patients having their blood tested.
Andrew Tyndall 3/29/13 9:58:42 pm

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